Page 78 of Even Robots Die (Even Ever After #3)

Florentine

A fter the guard brings me back to Raphael, everything goes quickly.

Raphael doesn’t really want to deal with us, so he dispatches two teams to send us on our way to the prison cells under Versailles’ palace.

I let my finger trail against the walls as we walk through the palace, and no one is the wiser.

When the guard closes the door of my cell and goes back up the stairs, I hear the mess that has started upstairs.

It’s not lost on me that I was lucky and that we haven’t encountered a single room where the light was dimmed and that I managed not to bump my wings against anything on the way.

It’s quiet here, but I know for a fact that it’s pandemonium at Versailles’ palace gates right now.

“Milton? You’re in?” I mouth for myself as I take a look at my current cell.

It’s small and dirty. The thing that’s on the ground can barely be called a mattress, and I think the bucket on the other side of the cell is supposed to be the equivalent of my toilet.

My cell shares bars with two others and, from what I can see, there are rows and rows of cells under the palace, and most of them are occupied.

Or are we still under the palace? I heard rumors that the écuries du roi were where Versailles’ jail cells were, so maybe I didn't realize how much the guard made me walk.

“Take all their electricity systems down,” I tell Milton.

That’s something I didn’t miss from the document I stole from the birds.

The nets they launch with their new guns need to be charged.

I don’t know how many they have in stock and I don't know how long this battle is going to last, but I won’t allow them to recharge those devil nets.

They’ll have to do with the ones they have on hand, and that’s already too much.

I wait for a few seconds and then suddenly, darkness falls around me.

I hear a gasp from the cell on my right.

“What are those?” someone on my left asks.

I can’t see who they are in the dark. The only indication I currently have is the map with the heat signatures that Milton loaded for me. At least thanks to that, I know where they sent Brice.

I don’t have time for small talk.

I quickly power up the wings, and they open completely. I get a few more gasps and then I grab the lock from the outside.

I recognize it from their file. It’s an electronic lock. No need for a key. It recognizes the jailer's fingerprints.

“You can’t pass through the bars,” says the man who asked about my wings. “It’s electrified so no shifter can pass through it.

I’d like to say, not being a shifter is what will make it okay for me, but I know it would be a blatant lie. Humans are more fragile than shifters, it’s well known.

“I think you’ll find that there is no electricity anymore,” I tell him right when I fry the lock. Yes, there is no power anymore but that doesn’t prevent anything with internal batteries from functioning.

There is a click that sounds in the whole room and then silence. As if everyone in their cell was holding their breath.

They might very well be doing just that.

I push my door and it opens without resistance. This time there is no gasp. It's as if every one of the prisoners can’t believe what is happening.

I turn to the guy who tried to warn me about the electricity between the bars and fry his lock too.

“What’s your name?” I ask him as I remove one of my gloves and open his door.

“Ariel,” he says before adding. “You’re human.”

I think it was supposed to be a question, but … well, not so much.

“Well, Ariel, wait for the click and then move to the next door,” I tell him as I hold my glove up for him to take.

I don’t even bother acknowledging the comment about me being human.

It shouldn’t have taken him so long to guess.

Shifters can smell what species they are after all.

But with the stench in the cells, maybe that impeded his sense of smell, who knows.

The man doesn’t answer but I see his heat signature move to the next cell and Milton turns up the power in the gloves in tandem and two-by-two, we fry all the locks.

It takes us only a minute for it to be over, but we don’t have a second to spare.

“Do you know how to get them out,” I ask the man when he comes back over to me. We’re just next to the exit door and I can’t take care of everyone if I have to go find Brice.

“Anne knows the way. I’m coming with you,” he tells me. “But we can’t just go like that with so many of us. There is no way we’re going to make it.”

It’s hard to gauge what the shifter thinks without my sight. Relying only on heat sensors is definitely not something I want to do every day. How do I read his face and determine the tone I can use with him? It’s very unsettling.

I don’t know who this Anne is he is talking about, but it might be safer if I don’t go alone anywhere in this damn palace. Not that I think the birds are going to notice us anyway. They’re most likely very busy at the moment.

“I might have orchestrated a teeny, tiny distraction,” I tell the man, but because I still want them to be prepared for what they’ll be greeted with once they get above ground I add, “There’s a battle going on in front of Versailles’ palace, and above it too.”

“Still coming with you,” the man says before walking to another heat signature that looks like she has muscle built on muscle, and telling her to get everyone out of the castle.

He walks back to me.

“There are two other dungeons. I bet that’s where you want to go?” Ariel asks me.

I nod. He seems to see me just fine, so I don’t bother with big sentences.

Without me asking, he gives me my glove back and I deactivate the last lock keeping us all here.

“Ready?” I ask everyone.

I bet they’re ready to be free, but I hope they’re also ready to run and maybe fight back too. We could use the manpower.

On a collective murmured “Yes,” I open the door and run without looking at the people I just freed.